Reminder from the LA Times: Crew Contradicted Kerry Over Battle, Doctor AllegesThe Race to the White HouseFresh criticism of the senator's record in Vietnam is dismissed by his campaign.|Stephen Braun | Times Staff WriterWASHINGTON — A former Navy doctor who says he treated Sen. John F. Kerry for the wound that led to his first Purple Heart in Vietnam said Tuesday that several of Kerry's crewmates told medical personnel at the time that the injury did not occur in battle.Dr. Louis Letson, a retired Alabama physician who served as Medical Officer at the Naval Support Facility at Cam Ranh Bay, said the crew's story contradicted Kerry's report in December 1968 that he was wounded during a river firefight between his swift boat and Viet Cong gunmen ashore.The doctor's account surfaced Tuesday as part of a barrage of criticism of Kerry by former swift gunboat officers who gathered in Washington to press the likely Democratic nominee to authorize the release of his wartime records.Kerry did not respond directly, but campaign officials angrily dismissed Letson's account and questioned why another medical official's signature appeared on Kerry's own records of his treatment for the wound. The Kerry campaign also said it had already posted online a copy of all official documents Kerry received from the Navy in his military file."If these people have different recollections 35 years later of what they saw or signed, they ought to take it up with the U.S. Navy," Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said.Several of Kerry's former swift boat crewmates also appeared in Washington to defend the Massachusetts senator. Drew Whitlow, an Arkansas man who served as rear gunner on one of the swift boats Kerry commanded, said that although critics were "entitled to their opinions," "I served alongside of the man. I know exactly what he was like. And I know the integrity and compassion he had."In an e-mailed account of his recollection of Kerry's treatment and in two phone interviews, Letson said Kerry, then a Navy lieutenant, appeared in the medical tent at Cam Ranh Bay on December 3, 1968, with a slight wound "covered with a Band aid.""There wasn't much blood to it," he said. "It looked like a splinter."Letson described a "small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 centimeter" and did "not look like a round from a rifle," he said. Letson said he "simply removed the piece of metal" with forceps.Letson said by phone that the wound was "pretty rare." "I don't remember treating any other shrapnel wounds at Cam Ranh Bay," he said.Meehan questioned Letson's role, saying a J.C. Carreon signed Kerry's medical report of the wound. "This gentleman is not the man who is on the report," he said.Letson said Carreon, a lower-ranking "hospitalman," was "present at the time and he, in fact, made the entry into Lt. Kerry's medical record which has only recently been made available to the public." Letson, 63, was a Navy lieutenant as well as a medical officer at the time.In several accounts, Kerry has said he was wounded by a piece of shrapnel as he and his crew engaged Viet Cong fleeing their boats on the beach. Kerry has said he was uncertain where the shrapnel came from.The U.S. military's regulations on issuing a Purple Heart require that an injury is received during "action against an enemy of the United States."According to Letson, Kerry told him during his visit to the medical tent that his crew "had been engaged in a firefight, receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action." Letson said he did not recall Kerry's demeanor being "anything out of the ordinary."Later, Letson said, several of Kerry's crew members told a different version to medical personnel: "They did not receive any fire from shore," he wrote, "but said that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewmen thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks."Letson added that the crew's account "seemed to fit the injury." Kerry's crewmen were "just talking to my guys," he said by phone. "It was just casual discussion. Up until that point, I didn't have any suspicions about it, but after I heard that, the circumstances sounded a little unusual. That's why I remembered it all this time."Letson said he played no role in the Navy's decision to award Kerry his first Purple Heart. "I didn't even know he got a Purple Heart for it until years later," he said.On Tuesday, nearly two dozen former swift boat commanders appeared at the National Press Club to disparage Kerry's war performance and his leadership role in the antiwar movement after he returned from Vietnam.The group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, was organized by former Rear Adm. Roy F. Hoffmann and John O'Neill, a Dallas lawyer who commanded a Navy gunboat during the war.O'Neill debated Kerry over the Vietnam War on TV in 1971 after a march organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and was cheered on by President Nixon. He said Kerry "exaggerates the small record he established."Hoffmann, who headed a command of 3,000 officers and enlisted men in 1968 and 1969, belittled Kerry as a "loose cannon" chafing under his command.Meehan and other Kerry aides questioned the timing of the group's emergence just as the Kerry campaign was launching a $25-million television ad campaign based on his Vietnam War record -- which, in addition to three Purple Hearts, included a Silver Star and Bronze Stars won for battlefield heroics.Kerry aides cited O'Neill's "Republican ties" and charged that Spaeth Communications, a Dallas public relations firm that organized the meeting, also had ties to Bush and the Republicans.

The links that were on John Kerry's web page are now dead. Here is a Google link to archived linksList of links- might have to click on "impatient"

http://www.johnkerry.com is still valid but his military links are dead on his page so you have to use the above link - or some links below

12/11/43 John Forbes Kerry was born (still a good link) to Rosemary and Richard Kerry (still a good link) in the west wing of the Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado.

Richard Kerry was a diplomat in the Foreign Service. Rosemary was a homemaker and a minor heir to the Forbes family wealth (one of 11 children born to James Grant Forbes and Margaret Winthrop).

Kerry attended boarding schools at the Institute Montana near Zug in Switzerland from 1954-1955, and La Clairiere, Villars sur Bez, Vaud, Switzerland, from 1955-1956, joining his family in West Berlin on vacations.

When Kerry was 13, his parents, who stayed in Europe, sent John to New England for his education, attending Fessenden School (a prestigious private school) in West Newton, Massachusetts in 1956-1957, until he was old enough to go to St. Paul's.

From there he went on to Yale where he majored in political science.

Kerry's interest in politics began in 1960, when John Kennedy was running for President.Kerry gave his first political speeches for JFK and at St. Paul's founded a political group, the John Winant Society. (He even was photographed with JFK sailing and with whom he and his family socialized).

In the summer of 1962, Kerry worked for Ted Kennedy, who was then making his first Senate bid. "I wanted to see how the political machine works." http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=352185

From his military papers http://web.archive.org/web/20040723192051/http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Emergency_Data.pdf

He wrote to his local recruitment board seeking permission to spend a further 12 months studying in Paris, after completing his degree course at Yale University in the mid-1960s. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/07/wkerr07.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/07/ixnewstop.htmlThe Harvard Crimson newspaper followed a youthful Mr. Kerry in Boston as he campaigned for Congress for the first time in 1970. In the course of a lengthy article, "John Kerry: A Navy Dove Runs for Congress", published on February 18, the paper reported: "When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy."

Goldhaber story in Harvard Crimson http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=352185 John Kerry has often implied that he volunteered for the military right after college. But Kerry petitioned his draft board for a student deferment. At Yale, Kerry's antiwar political views were well known. He . . . used his commencement address in 1966 to criticize the foreign policy of President Lyndon Johnson, especially with regard to Vietnam. When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy. . . . The top choice was the Navy Reserves where the duty commitment was shorter and a larger proportion of the period could be served stateside on inactive duty.CS (Kerry reports for Officer Candidate School-Newport, Rhode Island).

father, Richard Kerry, (link is ok) was born in 1915 in Brookline, Massachusetts (the same Boston suburb where John F. Kennedy was born two years later). Wikipedia link

Richard's father, Fredrick (Fred) A. Kerry, was a Czech Jew named Fritz Kohn who fled the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1905 to escape anti-Semitism. In 1902, Fritz had married Ida Lowe, a beautiful Jewish musician from Budapest. The young couple studied a map of Europe (or by one account, randomly dropped a pencil on a map of Europe), found County Kerry in Ireland, and chose it as their last name. The couple was baptized as Catholics.

They moved to Chicago with their young son Eric, where Fred earned a living as a business manager. Eventually they moved to Brookline, known as the "town of millionaires" in the early 1900s, had two additional children, Richard and Mildred. He kept it secret that he was of Jewish descent. With a two-story house in Brookline, a black Cadillac, and three healthy children it seemed that the Kerry family exemplified the American dream.

By now it is clear that Kerry was an actual Reserve Naval Officer on standby or inactive reserve duty during the first part of the 1970's and during his key anti-war "civilian" years. The question now seems to be one of Federal law. To what extent can a reserve military officer (not on active duty) engage in pro-enemy activity in time of war or during a period of military action?

All Reserve Officers have temporary rank. Only regular officers are immediately promoted to permanent grade. All Lts. and Ens. that are not academy graduates have temporary rank.

The question is how Kerry managed to award himself three Purple hearts in three months? Remember he was on a river boat and the only officer aboard! All he had to do was tell a corpsman the next time in port that he was injured by enemy action and sign the statement!

When someone is elected president, it means the Secret Service has to protect the President and his family as well as his property.

The Kerry's have five US properties not counting the several foreign properties they own too. The cost to run these homes are more than what the average American could afford, even if the rent was free, and all you had to pay the water, gas &electric. Including ground keepers, maintenance, pool and house keepers. To be President would require the taxpayers to pay for all that now if elected. Including a complete staffed Secret Service security 24 hours a day. In addition to that we will have to pay for each of their homes for security improvements even if they never go to them all, that is, that just in case. Who do you think will pay for all this? This takes all the expense off Kerry and puts it on us.

Nevertheless, factor another major cost to Americans that Kerry does not want you to know about.

Becoming president would automatically include taking care of all their properties with Secret Service Agents that includes 5 agents per 6 hour shift 4 times a day 365 days of the year for the rest of their lives so long as they own those properties.

It comes with being President, once you are elected. It requires us the taxpayers, to pay for this as well as his annual salary, as well as his retirements including the cost of living adjustments to boot, plus salaries and protection for all their real estate property, plus Secret Service Agents, and pay the bills for the rest of his life. In addition, feed the Secret Service Agents and rotate new ones every 6 hours for the rest of his life.

Do the math. Five properties need to be protected. This requires five Secret Service Agents per shift, daily every six hours, per property! That is 20 Secret Service Agents per day per property everyday including Holidays. Wow, what does that cost?

Lets say an average of 20 agents per property, each earning a about $60K per agent to survey the perimeters and protect. Now that times five properties so far. That is if the Kerry’s do not buy any more properties afterwards. This also includes the Agents vehicles and repairs, gas, meals, days off, paid vacation, and medical plan visits etc per agent.

Who pays? YOU pay, the whole time they are alive after becoming President!

Kerry enlisted in the US Naval Reserve for a period of six (6) full years and issued active duty orders to report to OCS on 8/20/66http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Temporary_Orders_and_Ranks.pdf

First Division head on USS GridleyIn charge of painting, mooring lines, refueling, etc.

2/9/68 to 6/6/68

3/23/68 to 3/27/68

West Pacific Cruise (info from Kerry webpage) (his military papers show 3/23/68 to 7/20/68 - seems like a short duration-date may be wrong as it does not show time from US to Gulf i.e. 2/9/68 probably is correct)Gulf Tonkin

Orders from Gridley Captain Turley when directed in July to proceed to Naval Amphibious Base Coronado for nine weeks training convening 28 August, 1968. “Provided no excess leave is involved, you are authorized to delay not later than …….31 October 1968 in reporting to Cam Ranh Bay.”

(Gridley CO J. Turley signs paper showing 51 days leave owed and that Kerry is detached as of this date)

7/21/68 to 8/17/68

28 days of leave taken (Kerry web page show Kerry leaves Gridley on 7/20/68 for training when in fact he took some leave time. http://web.archive.org/web/20040723191959/http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Leave_Record.pdf

8/25/68

Eight weeks of training begins

11/9/68 11/12/68

Four days leave taken http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Leave_Record.pdf

Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan sent a statement saying that "During John Kerry's service in Vietnam, many times he was on or near the Cambodian border and on one occasion crossed into Cambodia. . . . On December 24, 1968 Lieutenant John Kerry and his crew were on patrol in the watery borders between Vietnam and Cambodia deep in enemy territory."

Kerry web page shows Dec 68 to Jan 69 that he commands PCF-44.(lost this link - may find it later)

On January 22, 1969 Kerry and other Swift Boat commanders travel to Saigon for meeting with Adm. Zumwalt and Gen. Creighton Abrams

Late January (no exact date given)--Kerry joined his crew on PCF-94. In late January 1969, Kerry joined a five-man crew on swift boat No. 94 completing 18 missions over 48 days, almost all of them in the Mekong Delta

2/20/69

Kerry earned his second Purple Heart after sustaining a minor shrapnel wound in his left thigh on Feb. 20, 1969

Feb 28, 69 he was serving with Coastal Division 11 with PCF-94Mar 13, 69 he was serving with Coastal Division 11 with PCF-94

Commodore Charles F. Horne, an administrative official and commander of the coastal squadron in which Kerry served, filled out a document on March 17, 1969, that said Kerry had “been thrice wounded in action while on duty incountry Vietnam. Reassignment is requested ... as a personal aide in Boston, New York, or Wash., D.C. area.”

In April 1969, having engineered an early transfer out of the conflict because of his three minor wounds, John Kerry left his crew behind and returned home to a sweet assignment as an aide to Rear Admiral Walter F. Schlech, Jr.

3/19/69

Change of duty papers ‘form’ shows “date out by 3/20/69”COMSTSLANT at BKLYN dustaff(sp) as aide and flag lieutenant

http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Change_of_Duty.pdf

His web page shows early April, 1969--departs Vietnam

But Kerry Leave papers show leave taken 3/28/69 to 4/6/69 –ten days- http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Leave_Record.pdf

The 12/14/68 to 3/26/69 Fit Rep shows he was assigned Coastal Surveillance Force TF115 RVN (signed by George Elliott).

In October 1969, while Kerry, a pilot, was still on active duty assigned to Admiral Schlech, Kerry was flying Adam Walinsky (Ted Kennedy advisor and Robert F. Kennedy’s former speech writer), around the State of New York state so Walinsky could deliver speeches against the Vietnam War.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=352185

No real details of what he did while assigned to the Atlantic Fleet. Why is this subject a secret?Here is a copy of a webpage (Wikipedia Military career)--"On April 11, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970, Kerry was promoted to full Lieutenant; on January 3, he requested discharge. He was released from active duty on March 1." (again no details of what he did)

1/3/70

Promoted to full LT in the Reserve of the U. S. Navy. Signed by John Chafee, Secretary of the Navy. (odd thing is that the page shows the date blacked out and a new date of 11/27/70 entered)

Kerry had become so inspired by Walinsky’s anti-war beliefs that he petitioned Admiral Schlech, “to tell his boss that his conscientious dictated that he protest the war, that he wanted out of the Navy immediately so that he could run for congress.”

Admiral Schlech promoted Kerry to LT, then consented to allowing him an honorable discharge from the Navy six months early

Paragraph 6 in the Release from Active Duty form states: "You are advised that your release from active duty does not terminate your status as a memeber of the U.S. Naval Reserve. ... While on inactive duty you are subject to involuntary recall to active duty to the extent authorized by federal statute. ...")

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/07/wkerr07.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/07/ixnewstop.html "When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy."Feb 18, 1970 Published in Harvard Crimson “John Kerry: A navy dove runs for congress”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/07/wkerr07.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/07/ixnewstop.html "When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy."

Member of Order of Skull and Bone at Yale ( Roster http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/3/skullroster.htm ) (good link 9/4/2005)Sen. David Boren (D-OK.) was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.); Former Navy Secretary and was on the Senate Intelligence Committee.Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.): killed in an airplane crash. was a Bonesman as was his father (John Heinz (’31). The Heinz family has one of the largest food-producing companies in the world.Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.): Formerly on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kerry is now on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Some info on Skull and Bones 9/4/2005 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0122-10.htm

5/23/70

John Kerry married Philadelphia heiress Julia Stimson Thorne (born September 16, 1944, twin sister of John's friend, David Thorne). John and Julia later had two daughters, Alexandra, born on September 5, 1973, and Venessa, born on December 31, 1976.

5/24/70

Honeymoon to FranceKerry and Julia to Paris, France and met with Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the Foreign Minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam (PRG), the political wing of the Vietcong, and other Viet Cong and Communist Vietnamese representatives to the Paris peace talks, a trip he now calls a "fact-finding" mission.(U.S. code 18 U.S.C. 953, declares it illegal for a U.S. citizen to go abroad and negotiate with a foreign power.)

6/70

1/31/71

4/18/71

4/23/71

In June 1970, Kerry joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW)Kerry remained low-key in VVAW activities until September 7, 1970 when he accepted a prominent roll in VVAW's Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal.)Operation RAW called for "Vietnam Vets to march 86 miles between two Revolutionary War sites- Morristown, New Jersey and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania- engaging in gorilla theater all the way . . . the spectacle of this ragtag band of ex soldiers was bound to get the media's attention and it did."

From Valley Forge, Kerry and Fonda headed for Detroit, MI and their next propaganda scheme -- the Winter Soldier Investigation.From January 31 to February 2, 1971, over 125 self-proclaimed Vietnam veterans testified at a Detroit Howard Johnson's about wholesale rape, torture, and murder they claimed U.S. soldiers committed in Vietnam.From Detroit, Kerry took his VVAW to the Nation's capital and the Washington Spring Offense.

Kerry organized one of the most confrontational protests of the entire Vietnam War called Operation Dewey Canyon III.

It began April 18, 1971, with nearly 1,000 Vietnam vets gathered on the Washington, D.C., Mall for what they called "a limited incursion into the country of Congress.

On April 23, 1971, Kerry led members of VVAW in a protest during which they threw their medals and ribbons over a fence in front of the U.S. Capitol.

At a jammed Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on April 23, 1971, Kerry took his case to Congress. In a room crammed with television cameras, Kerry, dressed in green fatigues decorated with a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Heart ribbons, gave testimony that defined him and made possible his political career.

Honorable discharge from reservehttp://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Honorable_Discharge_From_Reserve.pdfAnother Wikipedia Military link --"With respect to Kerry's discharge from the Naval Reserve, Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times wrote:"A second charge is that Mr. Kerry did not successfully fulfill his time in the Reserves, so a special board had to be convened to determine what type of discharge he should receive.Navy documents show that in 1978, he received an "honorable discharge certificate" after a board of officers convened and reviewed his record.Navy officials say today that the board was standard operating procedure at that time for all reservists and does not indicate Mr. Kerry did anything wrong.After service just short of four years on active duty, Mr. Kerry transferred to the Ready Reserve and then in 1972 to the standby Reserve.He was not required to attend drills under those two designations, says a Navy official who asked not to be named.

7/25/88

After a six-year separation (1982-1988), John divorced his first wife, Julia Thorne. (Julia later remarried, to architect Richard Charlesworth and lives in Bozeman, Montana.)